Low life
Softly, softly
Jeffrey Bernard
It is estimated that there are 55,600 impotent men in the Avon and Somerset area. That is what I read in the Telegraph anyway and I believe in nearly everything I read in that organ. But how do they know? Who pays for these surveys and who carries them out or did 55,600 disgruntled women simply step forward and claim it to be so? I know there is one in Great Portland Street but why should the West Country be affected so severely? Could it be the cider? The causes of impotence are given as stemming from diabetes, alcohol, pelvic injuries, drugs, and psychological problems. Now if Night Nurse can be accounted a drug then I am holding a full house for the first time since I played poker in the army. Many's the evening I have set out from my flat to go to a dinner party and fallen down the stairs drunk and in a i diabetic coma and landed on my hip. But s it that simple? Are we to assume that those 55,600 country girls are all ravishing, irre- sistible beauties or that masturbation in Bristol and Taunton has reached epidemic proportions? Of the latter we can be pretty sure but surely there must be one woman out of those 55,600 who has never been made the offer, and is never likely to be.
But all in all this impotence is a very good thing, especially in view of the Aids situation although most of us who have put our life's savings into the British Rubber Company now face financial ruin. My own broker has advised me to buy all the Healthcrafts shares I can lay my hands on. Not that vitamin E has ever done much for me aside make me vomit when I swallow it with vodka. No, I personally welcome impotence and I wish it would hurry up and come, so to speak. When I ponder the fact that my life lies in ruins solely because of the fact that I have always followed the direction in which my various erections were pointing, I wish to God that I had been born a girl. But then I suppose it must be really horrid to be whistled at by building-site workers, pinched by Italians, dribbled over by Frogs, bought rather reluctantly for very large sums by Arabs, and seduced eventually by some smooth- talking English advertising executive with seemingly no bathing facilities of his own. Last week a man in the pub told me that as it was Thursday he would have a bath tomorrow. These people make my perfect- ly shampooed hair stand on end.
And there is another revolting element creeping into the bar, the likes of which I haven't come across since the days when I thought I was Jack the Lad, c.1960. They are a couple of silly men who make sexual boasts. One of them earns bundles in Fleet Street, comes into the Coach and orders drinks waving wads of cash and then announces, 'I woke up in Chelsea this morning with a girl and I couldn't even remember her name.' It makes you want to puke. He's ugly too. But what of such girls as the one he woke up with? Just what the hell are they doing with pigs like him? They must be desperately lonely or hungry or thirsty. People should be taught that being alone isn't dirty. And I'm always good for a plate of spaghetti and a drink, but don't rush me.
Anyway, to go back to the Avon and Somerset complaint and the medical pro- fession's concern about it — you can get a surgical penile implant at a cost of between £1,200 and £3,300 — what puzzles me is that people seem to think that sex is obligatory. It isn't. Incidentally, I suppose the cost of the operation must depend upon what you've got to start out with. But they are taking it so seriously now that a national survey is being carried out by the Impotence Information Centre at Staines. I wonder what sort of people work there. Why should they care if Tom, Dick and Harry are impotent? Impotence is the silver lining of the cloud of domestic soul murder and I raise my glass, but not much else, to it. Come to think of it, I spent Christmas in Bristol and very quiet and nice it was too. Somerset I don't know but if the County Club's cricket supporters are anything to go by then they should all be castrated. Of course, some would say that impotence is the easy way out. They may well be right. I would certainly lay down my rifle faced by 55,600 SS Panzer Grena- diers.
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